The gendered division of paid and domestic work under lockdown

Andrew, Alison, Cattan, Sarah, Costa Dias, Monica, Farquharson, Christine, Kraftman, Lucy, Krutikova, Sonya, Phimister, Angus and Sevilla, Almudena ORCID: 0000-0001-6143-5903 (2022) The gendered division of paid and domestic work under lockdown. Fiscal Studies, 43 (4). pp. 325-340. ISSN 0143-5671

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Abstract

This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the division of labour between parents of school-aged children in two-parent opposite-gender families. In line with existing evidence, we find that mothers’ paid work took a larger hit than that of fathers, and that mothers spent substantially longer doing childcare and housework than their partners. We go further to show that these gender differences cannot be explained by gender differences in the industries and occupations in which parents worked prior to the lockdown. Nor can they be explained by gender differences in earnings prior to the crisis: independently of which parent earned the most before the pandemic, it tended to be the mothers who adjusted time spent on paid and unpaid work more significantly. This is the case even in households where only one partner remained active in paid work. While we cannot fully rule out that these asymmetric responses are explained by gender differences in productivity in domestic work, our results do suggest that other factors, such as gender norms, may play an important role.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Social Policy
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory
JEL classification:	J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J16 - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Time Allocation, Work Behavior, and Employment Determination and Creation; Human Capital; Retirement > J22 - Time Allocation and Labor Supply D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics > D13 - Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
Date Deposited:	15 Mar 2024 15:15
Last Modified:	22 Nov 2024 05:15
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/122401

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